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fleet proclaimed
her intention of ultimately challenging the British navy.
Foiled in the hope of using the Boers to establish German
power in South Africa, German statesmen turned their
attention to the Far East. Unable, owing to the common action
of the Powers and the rise of Japan, to convert their territory
of Kiao-Chau into an eastern empire, they then entered on their
struggle with France for Morocco and the north-west coast of
Africa. The solid resistance of France and Great Britain to
German expansion in that quarter caused the Pan-Germans to
put their faith in another plan to which no one was prepared to
take exception. This great plan is best known under the short
title of ' Berlin-Baghdad '. The main idea was the erection of a
system or chain of allied States under the hegemony of
Germany, and stretching from the North Sea to the Persian
Gulf. Berlin had long been joined to Constantinople by excellent
railways, and German engineers were busy with the completion
of a further line which should stretch across the 900 miles of
Turkey in Asia to Baghdad and Basra and link itself up with the
railway running south from Damascus to Meeca. This railway
was to develop and complete Germany's economic and military
control of the Ottoman Empire. The great untapped riches of
Asia Minor should flow westwards to Germany, and German
officers would be found in control of everything as far as the
Persian mountains and the deserts of Arabia.
The plan was admirably feasible, and has been put in force
almost completely in the course of this war (not quite, for our
troops are solidly established on the Persian Gulf and hold
Baghdad, while the Russians have penetrated far into Armenia).
If ' Berlin-Baghdad ' were achieved, a huge
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block of territory
producing every kind of economic wealth and unassailable by
sea-power would be united under German authority. Russia
would be cut off by this barrier from her western friends,
Great Britain and France. German and Turkish armies would be
within easy striking distance of our Egyptian interests, and
from the Persian Gulf our Indian Empire would be threatened.
The port of Alexandretta and the control of the Dardanelles
would soon give Germany enormous naval power in the
Mediterranean.
A glance at the map of the world will show how the chain of
States stretched from Berlin to Baghdad. The German Empire,
the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, Turkey. One little strip
of territory alone blocked the way and prevented the two ends
of the chain from being linked together. That little strip was
Serbia. Serbia stood small but defiant between Germany and
the great ports of Constantinople and Salonika, holding the
gate of the East. Little though we knew or cared in England,
Serbia was really the first line of defence of our eastern
possessions. If she were crushed or enticed into the ' Berlin-
Baghdad ' system, then our vast but slightly defended empire
would soon have felt the shock of Germany's eastward thrust.
To Germany, therefore, Serbia was an intolerable nuisance.
Serbia would not be cajoled into the family of Germany's
vassal-states. Therefore, Serbia must be crushed. The Serbs
knew well that the Treaty of Bucharest was not the end of war
in the Balkans. As soon as the German military preparations
were completed, an excuse would not be wanting, and then the
Serbs might look to themselves, for the last and most terrible
of their wars would burst upon them.
During the year that followed the Balkan wars, South Eastern
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